


though this be madness

by StarryCleric



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: "Training", Angst, Animal Abuse, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Blood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Reginald's Idea of Training Would Never Pass An Ethics Committee, Violence, heed the warnings if you're not good with animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 15:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarryCleric/pseuds/StarryCleric
Summary: Ben stares down at the towel and shirt. The towel is fluffy and pristine, and the shirt is freshly washed and ironed. Both were pure white before Ben touched them, but now both are marred by dark red handprints and drops of blood that drip down his face and chest.Lady Macbeth, with her own dripping red hands, floats in his mind, swatting at the daggers that only she can see.Out, damned spot! out, I say!





	though this be madness

**Author's Note:**

> TW: animal abuse, animal death, blood

Ben stands in the center of the bunker, shivering against the cold in the basement with his arms crossed in front of his bare chest. The fluorescent tubes in the ceiling flood the room with harsh, clinical light that make his blue veins stand out underneath pale skin. The floor is scattered with the remains of test dummies that have been mercilessly dashed against the walls and ripped into dozens of pieces, despite the fact that they were designed to withstand thousands of pounds of force.

Behind him, the flashing red light switches to green, and the intercom buzzes into life.

_“Number Six, you were instructed to leave one of the dummies intact while eliminating the other four. Lack of control to this degree is unacceptable.”_

His stomach aches where the monsters are burrowed, furious at having been reeled in before their bloodlust had been sated yet again. Ben knows better than to try to explain to his father that he can only open the gate so many times before he loses the upper hand on an entire dimension of eldritch beasts, so he says nothing.

The intercom remains quiet. If Reginald expects some kind of response to his taunt about control, he’s going to be disappointed.

Finally, there’s a huff of exasperation. _“You will complete one more exercise summoning your powers before you finish for the day, Number Six. Pogo, bring out the next batch of test subjects.”_

Calling the angry monsters that use his body as a doorway “his” attributes far too much credit to him, in Ben’s opinion. He bites his tongue and moves to the back of the room as the heavy metal doors unlock and slide open to let Pogo in.

Only, it’s not just Pogo waiting by the door. The cart he wheels into the room has six cages on it, each containing a live, squealing pig. Ben blinks in shock as the puzzle pieces start to click together in his mind. Each one of the pigs has a circle painted on its back, four of them blue and two of them white.

Ben watches with wide eyes as Pogo unlatches each cage and the pigs shuffle out into the bunker. “No, wait, Pogo…” He stretches out a hand like he can do anything to stop this before it goes too far. Pogo gives him a sad look, but doesn’t say a word before wheeling the empty cages out of the room and sealing the door shut again, leaving the pigs sealed in the room with him.

Oh God. This is… this is too much. “Dad,” Ben croaks, “I don’t want to.”

Reginald doesn’t acknowledge that Ben spoke at all. _“Your last task of the day, Number Six, is to eliminate the pigs labelled with the blue circles while preserving the ones marked in white. This is to test your ability to distinguish between friends and foes while on the battlefield.”_

The room seems to be spinning while Ben contemplates tearing apart the pigs that are now snorting and rooting around on the ground, looking for something to eat. A phrase from _Romeo and Juliet_ drifts through his mind: _These violent delights have violent ends._

He wants to yell at Reginald that there’s no way this sick game he wants to play would ever pass a board of ethics, that his tests are meaningless chaos, that his stomach is churning painfully already and one more carnage-filled “experiment” is only going to make things worse.

But. He’s been here before. He can refuse, and be locked in the bunker until he complies. Or he can get it over with quickly and have time to shower off before dinner.

Ben lets out one shuddering exhale before straightening his back and nodding at the camera his father is watching from.

The green light switches to red as the extra security door slides into place. Some of the pigs look up at the noise of grinding metal, but otherwise don’t seem to realize that Ben has just sealed their grizzly fates.

Ben gives himself three seconds to try to wrestle his anxiety under control, and then tentatively turns his concentration to the rumbling thrum of otherworldly energy that swirls under the surface of his skin. It never takes long to let his mind tap into the other place where the monsters live, but after letting them out and forcing them back so many times today already, it takes less than a second for them to burst to life and start straining to leap out.

He finds the place at his core where he knows the connection between his world and theirs is. His mind goes to _Julius Caesar_ as he pries open the gate.

_Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war._

An instant later, the eldritch tentacles blast out of his chest, seeking out the warm bodies that are locked in the room with him with a vicious need to rip tear shred destroy. Ben never knows if the agonized howling and screeching he hears comes from them or from himself, or if there’s even a difference when he’s in this state. He tries to cling to the connecting point in his chest and project the idea of only grabbing the blue circles into the minds of the beasts he’s set loose, but it’s like being caught in a hurricane and telling the storm to slow down. After being tempted with and then denied the carnage they wildly craved, it’s all Ben can do to keep the monsters from tearing his own body apart in their frenzy.

The bunker transforms into a flurry of violence, with Ben trapped at the center. Squealing and screaming fills the room, as the pigs try to get away from the inescapable Horror. Ben squints, trying to shield himself from the tentacles and the sprays of gore that the monsters delight in.

There’s not much room to think around the abject terror he feels as he tries to wrestle back some semblance of control. The tentacles are straining, yanking Ben around in their furor, seeking out more and more flesh to rend and tear. A splatter of warm blood splashes across Ben’s face, and he suddenly thinks he might not be able to stop them before they rip him to pieces in their insatiable rage.

The monsters seize on his moment of weakness and start pulling apart with more force, trying to break free from him. Ben shrieks as he feels his chest start to tear, and he has the thought that this must be what madness feels like. Tearing and ripping before finally self-destructing, while voices he can’t understand howl in his ears.

Ben’s heart races frantically as he reaches back for the connecting point and starts to force it closed. It takes a monumental effort and a fortitude he didn’t know he still had, but the connection finally begins dissolving where he tries to crush it. The tentacles thrash, sending sprays of blood against the walls, but they start to retreat back before Ben can cut them off from their home. Ben squeezes his eyes shut as they angrily go back to their cage inside him. The blood that coats them can’t travel through the gate, meaning it is slicked off onto him like gory buckets of paint.

Ben is trembling with exhaustion and his knees threaten to buckle, but finally, finally, the monsters are gone. And to his monumental surprise, the bunker isn’t completely silent. In the corner behind him, a terrified pig is squealing and digging at the cement. He cracks one eye open and turns around to examine the aftermath. The room is coated in chunks and splatters of red, with most of the bodies having been destroyed beyond recognition, but one pig with a white circle emblazoned on its back is running back and forth, trying to find a way to get as far away from Ben as possible. It doesn’t appear to have been physically hurt at all.

The intercom crackles to life. _“Disappointing, but not a complete failure, Number Six. This will conclude your personal training for the day. You are dismissed until dinner at 1900 hours.”_

Ben’s stomach stings sharply. He looks down at himself and sees that for the first time, there are cuts in his skin where the tentacles tried to rip him apart. He goes to prod at them, but then he takes a look over his absolutely blood-drenched hands and changes his mind.

“What time is it now, then?” His voice is scratchy from overuse.

There’s no response from Reginald. Both doors protecting the entrance to the bunker slide open, where Pogo is waiting holding a towel and a clean button down shirt for him. As Ben stumbles out of the bunker, the sprinklers in the ceiling turn on, starting to rinse the blood from the walls while the terrified pig continues squealing its heart out in the corner. Ben wonders what will happen to it.

“Here you are, Master Ben,” Pogo says, pressing the towel and shirt into his hands. “It is currently six o’clock, so you should have enough time to get cleaned up before Grace has dinner ready for you all.”

Ben stares down at the towel and shirt. The towel is fluffy and pristine, and the shirt is freshly washed and ironed. Both were pure white before Ben touched them, but now both are marred by dark red handprints and drops of blood that drip down his face and chest.

Lady Macbeth, with her own dripping red hands, floats in his mind, swatting at the daggers that only she can see. _Out, damned spot! out, I say!_

Pogo waits a moment, like Ben is going to say something in response. He looks a bit uncomfortable in the silence, and Ben notices how he hesitates to reach out and lets his hands hover over Ben’s shoulders before taking a deep breath and giving him a gentle nudge towards the stairs out of the basement. “Run along now. It wouldn’t do to keep your siblings waiting for their dinner.”

“What are you going to do with the pig?” Ben asks.

Pogo glances back into the bunker. The water and blood runs down the walls, all of it filtering down the drain installed in the center of the room. “I’m sure your father has plans for it.”

Ben heads up the stairs.

When he reaches for the door that leads out into the ground floor, he can hear the low mumble of people whispering on the other side. He rubs the towel over his face to clear away the worst of the mess before wrapping it around his shoulders and stepping outside.

Klaus, Luther, and Allison are all sitting around on the couches in the living room. Correction: Klaus is half passed out in one of the arm chairs, his eyes glazed over and his fingers clutching a smoking roll of burnt paper. Luther and Allison had been whispering to one another on the other side of the room, but both jumped to their feet when they saw him walk out.

“Hey buddy, how’s it goin’?” Klaus slurs at him from the corner.

Ben clutches the towel a bit closer to himself. The thin cuts on his stomach sting. “You should put that out before Dad comes up,” he mumbles.

Klaus blinks, before snorting and nodding his head awkwardly. He jams the paper into the carpet, snuffing it out. Ben really hopes the carpet won’t catch fire.

Allison and Luther take a few steps toward him, still practically shoulder to shoulder. “Ben,” Allison says slowly, “that’s a lot of blood. Are you okay?”

“It’s not mine.” _Not all of it, anyway._

Allison blinks. “Oh.”

She and Luther give each other some sort of look that Ben doesn’t bother trying to figure out the meaning of. Luther clears his throat. “Well, did Dad make it a good training session at least?”

Klaus lets out a bark of laughter in the corner, making Luther frown.

Ben looks them all over as a glob of dark blood slides down his cheek. Klaus, faded and slumped in the corner, his eyes drooping against whatever drug is clogging his senses. Allison, her hair done up and styled, her shirt tucked neatly into her perfectly pleated skirt. Luther, the golden boy, who was genuinely wondering if Ben enjoyed his training with their father without a single further thought.

He looks at them, and feels the dark monsters that live inside him, that make his skin crawl and his stomach churn. He looks at Luther, blue eyes meeting brown. Spaceboy versus The Horror. There’s a void between them that Ben suddenly doubts is possible to cross, even though they’re only standing a few feet apart.

“I need a shower,” he mutters after a too-long silence. He turns on his heel and hurries towards the bathroom down the hall.

“Ben, wait, I only meant that Dad probably just –”

Ben shuts the door.

**Author's Note:**

> will I ever NOT be devastated by Ben Hargreeves' whole story? 
> 
> Signs Point To No


End file.
